Monday, July 6, 2009

LITACamp Wrap-up

A big huge thanks to everyone involved in the first ever
LITACamp
May 7-8, 2009
Colombus, Ohio
The terrific Keynote/daily kick off speakers:
Joan Frye Williams
John Blyberg
The sponsors:
BCR
OCLC
The LITA Camp Task Force
Mark Beatty
David Ward
Jennifer Ward
Michelle Frisque
Zoe Marshall
Peter Murray
Maurice York
Eric Childress
Holly Tomren
Lisa Thomas
and in particular the 50+ attendees.

The conference wiki is the source to check at:

Experience is showing that attendees interest, contributions and level of participation really makes a "camp". The LITACamp had a diverse, lively, eager, and really flexible group that contributed to a great experience for all. We were able to utilize a number of un-conference techniques to allow everyone to share and discover want they came to camp for.

Each day began with a kick off speaker. Joan Frye Williams the first day and John Blyberg the second. Both provided important thought provoking ideas on the nature and futures of technology and libraries. There were stimulating ideas and conversations that urged but did not dominate or overshadow attendees ideas and concerns.

The theme that quickly emerged from the campers and continued in many variations for the whole un-conference was "User Experience". That theme colored almost every other topic as for example how can libraries improve UX, deliver the patron expectations of UX and convince our colleagues of the importance of UX.

For full reports in all manner of methods check out the conference sessions notes at:

Some random thoughts and general notes about LITACamp
The OCLC Conference facilities were excellent, the was staff great, good wifi everywhere, and when power strips were requested they showed up almost instantly. There were loads of rooms of various sizes, all well equipped, to meet all our diverse needs. An especially big thanks to Eric Childress who so generously arranged with LITA the conference facilities.
Holly Tomren and Lisa Thomas did a super job with Twitter and the camp. They made sure there was a universal hashtag and that everyone knew about it. Then they made sure Twitter was used. Finally they made sure the archive was captures. Check the Session Notes page. Holly and Lisa have written up their Twitter experiments and experience, in particular from LITACamp, as part of their ALA Emerging Leader project. It describes techniques and procedures which will be used by LITA.
uStream videos were made of short interviews. Just a laptop and a wireless connection were needed. These are on the Session Notes page too.
Thanks to Sheila Zillner of WiLS for the LITACamp graphic.
Large thanks to the LITA staff for loads of support and encouragement.
Excellent local arranging from Peter Murray and Zoe Marshall, with a great deal of flexibility to include the opening night of the new Star Trek and then due to family and other commitment neither of them were able to attend.
My personal thanks to David Ward, Michelle Frisque and Jennifer Ward and Maurice York for stepping up and really keeping the process moving forward at several different times during the planning and production of the event. Among so many other things David was the wiki master, Jennifer the Facebook group and Michelle wrangled sponsors.
If you're looking for someone to blame, it's all my, Mark Beatty, fault .

1 comment:

randy said...

Hi, very helpful post. Would it be okay for me to provide a guest post on your site? Thanks!

Randy
randydavis387 at gmail.com